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Sunday, March 3, 2013

Finding Your Irish Roots

There’s a new
charitable organisation, Ireland Reaching Out, set up by the Irish government to boost tourism (or as they say to welcome home the Irish diaspora to
their ancestral parishes) by encouraging people of Irish extraction to find out
about their roots.

One of their main aims is to identify people who left
Ireland, and trace them and their descendants worldwide and their other main
aim is to help people researching their Irish ancestry to find an elusive
gravestone, the location of their ancestor’s dwelling, make contact with living
relatives or discover more about a community.

They’ve recruited an army of
volunteers covering over 500 Irish parishes and they’re offering their services
free but they offer the opportunity to make a donation too.It’s organised at the parish level so you
need to know which parish an ancestor came from, and then you can register and
add details about the ancestor that you want to research. There are links to
family history societies, archives, and other resources.